In 1916 Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna had moved from Saint Petersburg and settled in the Mariinsky Palace in Kiev. Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna had been engaged in the organization of hospitals, hospital trains and resorts, where recuperating wounded thousands of Russian soldiers wounded at fronts of First World War. In October 1916 she has celebrated the Fiftieth anniversary of her direct involvement in the Department of Institutions of Empress Maria (mother of Alexander III).

In 1916 Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna had moved from Saint Petersburg and settled in the Mariinsky Palace in Kiev. She had been engaged in the organization of hospitals, hospital trains and resorts, where recuperating wounded thousands of Russian soldiers wounded at fronts of First World War. In October 1916 she has celebrated the Fiftieth anniversary of her direct involvement in the Department of Institutions of Empress Maria (mother of Alexander III).

First World War and Revolutions in Russia

In June 1914 the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife had been killed in Sarajevo by a 19 year old a Serbian student from Bosnia Gavrilo Princip, who was a member of a terrorist organization "Mlada Bosna" who fought for the unification of all South Slavic peoples into a single state. This Sarajevo assassination has been used by Austrian and German ruling circles as an excuse to unleash a European war. However the real reasons for the war were economic imperialism, trade barriers, militarism and autocracy, the territorial claims and allied commitments European powers.

The war in 1914 was unfolding on the French and Russian territories, as well as in the Balkans (Serbia), the Caucasus and the Middle East (from November 1914), and in the colonies of European countries - in Africa, China and Oceania . As a result of this war the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Osmanian (Turkish/Ottoman) and German Empires will be ceased to exist.

The outbreak of First World War caught some part of Russian Imperial family while being in Europe. Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna was in London where she visited her oldest sister Alexandra Dowager Queen of  England, two sisters had always a good relationship. Her oldest daugter Grand Duchess Xenia with her husband Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich were spending a summer in London as well, and Yusupovs family were in Berlin at that time. German government refused to permit them transit via German territories and Russian Imperial family members took a train first to Denmark and then could come to Russia via Sweden and Finland. 

For Russia the results of the First World War were catastrophic as they led to February and October revolutions in Russia in 1917, the overthrow of monarchy and the seizure of power by Bolsheviks (means the "majority" in Russian) led by Lenin. The February Revolution of 1917 had began as a spontaneous impulse of the masses, but its success was contributed to an acute political crisis summit, discontent with the liberal-bourgeois circles and autocratic policies of  tsar Nicholay II. Bread riots, anti-war rallies, demonstrations, strikes at the industrial enterprises superimposed on the discontent and unrest among the soldiers acceding to the streets of the revolutionary masses. February 27 (March 12), 1917 a general strike escalated into an armed uprising; troops who defected to the rebels and took the most important points of the city government buildings. Under these circumstances, the tsarist government had shown an inability to react quickly and decisively. Few scattered forces keeping faithful to tsar were unable to cope with the anarchy that has engulfed Russian capital Petrograd and a few pieces taken from the front of the war to crush the rebellion could not get through to the city.

A.I.Denikin

Anton Ivanovich Denikin a Lieutenant General of the Russian Imperial Army who was a prominent military commander, a patriot and active leader of a resistance movement called White Army against Red (Soviet) Army during the Russian Civil War (1918-1920) wrote in his memoirs about those times:

“Unrestrained orgy, some sadistic power that showed replacing one after the other rulers of the government appointed by Rasputin (here he means a mysterious healer Grigory Rasputin who had an influence on Empress Alexandra . Rasputin made her believe that her son heir Alexey who had been suffering from hemophilia can be cured by him) at  the beginning of 1917 led to the fact that the state did not hade any political party, any class to which tsarist (royal) government could be relied. All believed that the government is enemy of people: Purishkevich (one of Rasputin’s murder) and Chkheidze (a chairman of Interim Executive Committee of Petrograd after February Revolution in 1917), united nobility and the working groups, the grand dukes and any educated soldiers ... summarize only those charges that were brought against it is true on the eve of the fall of the State Duma (Russian Parliament of that time).

Governmental activities in the absence of a public organization had broken industrial life and transport of the country. The government was powerless and clumsy in dealing with this devastation, one of the reasons which were of course selfish and sometimes predatory aspirations of Commerce and industrialists.

The village was destitute. A number of serious mobilizations without any privileges and exemptions provided by other classes, worked on defense and took away the working hands… that led to the cessation of supplies of grain, hunger and repression in the village.”

A royal family tragedy

Since the autumn of 1916 in opposition to Nicholay II stood not only the radical left and liberal State Duma, but even the closest relatives of him – 15 grand dukes. Their demarches made ​​history as the "princely Fronde" by analogy with the Fronde princes in France of XVII century. A common requirement of grand dukes became suspension of governance of Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra (who they claimed in her German origin) and the appointment of a responsible government. In particular the universal hatred was to the Prime Minister B.V. Sturmer of German origin who headed the tsarist government from January 20 to November 10, 1916 who was at the same time, by 7 July of the same year, Minister of interior affairs and then Minister of foreign affairs.

According to some researchers Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna had also demanded the resignation of  Prime Minister Sturmer. She also unsuccessfully begged tsar Nicholay II not to assume a supreme command of the Russian Imperial Army in early 1915.

In 1916 Maria Fedorovna had moved from Petrograd (Saint Petersburg was renamed in a Slavic manner in a connection with the nationalist sentiments at the beginning of WWI) and settled in the Mariinsky Palace in Kiev. (The palace was ordered to be constructed in 1744 by Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, and was designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the most famous architect working in the Russian Empire at that time.). Dowager Empress had been engaged in the organization of hospitals, hospital trains and resorts, where recuperating wounded thousands of Russian soldiers. In October 1916 she has celebrated the Fiftieth anniversary of her direct involvement in the Department of Institutions of Empress Maria (mother of Alexander III).

In February 1917 the Interim Government has taken the power in Petrograd while tsar Nicholay II has been at Headquarters of the Supreme Commander in Mogilev city many hundred kilometers away. In March 1917 Russian Emperor Nicholay II under the pressure disclaimed renounced the crown for his brother Grand Duke Mikhail, who also had refused it thus giving the legacy to Interim Government.

Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna had learned about abdication of her son Emperor Nickolay II while being in Kiev and travelled to Mogilev to meet with her “dear Nicky”. It was the last time she saw him in her life. After this meeting she moved with her youngest daughter Grand Duchess Olga to Ay-Todor Castle in Crimea. Her closest members of their large Imperial family including Yusupovs family had been also moving to Crimea under the pressure and as a result of the Revolution.

Adapted and translated from

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B9%D0%BD%D0%B0

Издание: Деникин А.И. Очерки русской смуты. — Париж, 1921

http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/lan_ka_k/post253041928